


Mantle of Green & Crown of Silver

by rightsidethru



Series: Steter Network Monthly Prompts [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Magic Canon, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, And I decided to write anyway., Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Post Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Professor!Peter Hale, Sixth Year!Stiles, Slytherin!Stiles, Steter Network Monthly Prompt, The Hogwarts AU that no one asked for., The author spent way too much time on Pottermore and the Wikia to prep for this., Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: Or perhaps in SlytherinYou'll make your real friends,Those cunning folks use any meansTo achieve their ends.For better or for worse, Peter becomes intrigued by his new transfer student from America.





	Mantle of Green & Crown of Silver

**Author's Note:**

> August 2017 Prompt: Silver

Peter honestly despaired for his sixth year Defense against the Dark Arts class.

It was as if the little morons had decided to celebrate passing however many number of OWLs they had managed to scrape together by letting their brains empty of any and all commonsense and knowledge gained from the previously five years of standardized learning. However, should that actually be the case… Next year, then, would be fun to watch as the professor leaned back and basked in the _Oh, hell. The NEWTs are at the end of this year. We’re graduating! We have to decide on a career! We have to figure out how to finally provide for ourselves!! **What are we going to do??**_

But:

That was then and this was now and, unfortunately, _now_ comprised of a class of Gryffindor and Slytherin _morons_ who couldn’t be bothered to fill those currently empty heads.

The professor sighed heavily, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back against his desk and offered his best _I’m Very Disappointed in You All_ to the class at large. While the Slytherins knew better than to fall for it so readily, it had the expected result on the Lion Tribe: they wilted as a collective whole, slumping down in their seats and avoiding eye contact with the werewolf.

“Really?” Peter continued on and finally allowed his previously restricted sarcasm to enter his voice. “ _No one_ has _any_ idea? Not one clue—or educated guess?” A dismissive gesture towards the front of the class invited someone—anyone—to step forward and speak up.

Peter’s mouth twisted into a more genuine moue of disappointment at the continued lack of response.

He was about to launch into an explanation—as well as assign a three foot long essay, due by the next class period in revenge for his students’ stupidity—when the new Slytherin transfer student turned his face away from where he had been watching the Giant Squid play skipping stones with a couple of first years and directed his full attention Peter’s way.

“You can’t rely on a mirror to positively identify a vampire anymore because mirrors are no longer made with silver—sometimes mercury, though that was more common before the 1940’s—backings. Nowadays, chrome, silicon oxides, and silicon nitrides are used for the backside.”

Peter’s eyebrows rose at the detail layered within the student’s answer, at how specific the boy was able to get—and how surprisingly _Muggle_ those details happened to be, as well. Before the professor could comment with his own additional input, however, the teen continued his influx of information:

“No silver in the mirror means that the vampire’s reflection will actually show, hence it no longer being a liable method of identification. However, there are spells that MACUSA’s U.S. Auror Division uses for vampire-specific identification purposes that the MoM’s Aurors haven’t yet adopted. One of them—honestly, the best, though it’s a bit controversial since it leans a _little_ bit into blood magic territory—is Ketsueki’s _Akatsuki Shinrui_.”

If anything, Peter’s eyebrows rose that much higher—nearly touching his hairline at this point—at the conclusion of Mieczysław (“Please, for all that’s holy, just give up on my first name and just call me _Stiles_.”) Stilinski’s rambling overshare of information. It was obvious, as well, that the other students had tuned the teen out after the initial explanation to the professor’s question—the Slytherins also adopting both _obviously_ long-suffering and irritated expressions despite their typically staunchly neutral pureblood masks; the slip was enough to hint to Peter that this must be a regular enough occurrence in their common room.

Peter found himself… _fascinated_.

“Correct,” the werewolf admitted with a small inclination of his head—a sort of hat’s off to the student for managing to provide a right answer—and then continued, blue eyes intent in his desire to learn _how_ : “I’m curious to know, however, how you managed to learn so many… specifics.”

Stiles shrugged a shoulder, gesture careless and almost dismissive in nature. “Back in the States and before his relocation here, my dad was the Auror Regional Head for the Northwest. We didn’t have House Elves, so I ended up tagging along with him to the station when he couldn’t find an appropriate babysitter to watch me. It ended up with me spending a lot of time around lots of different Aurors—and I tended to… pick things up.”

There was truth to the teen’s words, but Peter had the advantage of his werewolf hearing: no matter how flawlessly the boy spoke the words, there were slight hiccups here and there that gave away the lies. The professor couldn’t quite tell _where_ the lie resided, but… it was there.

Before the DADA could question his student further, however, the tinkling sound of bells signaled the end of the class period as it rang throughout the castle hallways. Students immediately leapt upon their books and various other school supplies, quickly shoving everything into their bags so that they could head down to the Great Hall for lunch. As the student body mobbed towards the classroom door en masse, Peter smirked wickedly and called out their homework assignment:

“ _Four_ feet of parchment on five modern methods of identifying vampires with an explanation as to why they work and how they differ from older ways. Due next class period for everyone except for Mr. Stilinski—who is exempt from the assignment.”

The students groaned in dismay, and Peter accepted their misery as only a teacher who rejoiced in the pain of his students could do. To be a further solidify his role as Hogwarts’ resident troll (in the truly Muggle sense), he tacked on a: “Have a wonderful weekend and be sure to enjoy it!”

Peter was rather certain that the muffled snort he heard in response came from his newly intriguing student.

++

Stiles was in the Restricted Section.

While any student fifth year or up was more than welcome to browse the carefully monitored area (with teacher approval, however), most didn’t. It was actually rather rare to see _any_ student below a seventh year in the section, and that was typically only around NEWTs time and oftentimes paired with the need to research other sources for end-of-the-year projects. But the way that Stiles wandered his way up and down the roped-off aisles, fingertips brushing over certain book spines without bothering to glance at the titles: it spoke of a familiarity with the Restricted Section that few except for Peter’s fellow professors ever managed to develop.

“Perhaps I should feel surprise at finding you here,” the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor commented when the teen finally lingered longer than he previously had to page through a book whose leather cover was so darkened with age that it had become a sort of matte ebony. Stiles glanced up when Peter spoke, eyebrows lifting at the offered observation. “It’s more telling, however, that I’m not.”

The boy gave a sly, fox-like smile in response, lips curling upwards in a shared sort of amusement. “Would you believe me if I said that it’s for a project?”

Peter snorted at the more than blatant lie: the boy’s body language didn’t even bother trying to pretend that the words were the truth but, more than that, Stiles’ heartbeat stuttered tellingly as he spoke the words aloud. “Werewolf,” the older man elucidated with a tap to his ear when Stiles curiously glanced sidelong at him at the sound. As easy as the explanation was offered, however, appearances were deceiving and Peter kept a close eye on the teen’s reaction—curious to see how Stiles responded in turn.

“And that’s the part that I _definitely_ don’t miss,” the amber-eyed teen shot back even as his attention was drawn back to the text in his hands, attention shifting as a thoroughly as a pendulum’s relentless swing.

Yet, as easy a dismissal that change in focus would have been under normal circumstances, the wording of Stiles’ reply ensured that Peter would not yet leave the boy to his reading and… _research_. “You’re familiar with werewolves and their abilities?” the professor lightly inquired.

“My best friend was bit when he was eleven,” came the absent reply. “There was no pack close enough to take Scott in to teach him about his wolf and, besides, he was previously a No-Maj—which was a whole ‘nother set of complications. So I helped him instead.”

“…you taught control to a newly bitten eleven year-old werewolf when you were eleven years old yourself.”

Stiles slowly blinked and lifted his honeyed gaze from the text he had been reading, eyebrows lifting high on the stretch of his forehead as the teen processed, considered, and weighed Peter’s flatly spoken statement. Eventually, Stiles answered, voice layered thick with an unspoken, sarcastic ‘duh.’ “Well… yeah. Who else was going to do it?”

Peter grinned at that, the expression as wide and as full of teeth as a shark’s grin. “My, my. You’re just full of surprises, Mr. Stilinski.”

++

“ _Confringo!_ ”

The blue-eyed werewolf paused as he made his way towards his office, attention immediately caught by the destructive curve; Peter’s gaze narrowed and his head tilted just-so to the side in an attempt to try to place _where_ the spell was being said. Before Peter was able to figure out the spell’s origin, however, a new voice snapped out:

“You fucking Mudblood, _stand still_ \-- Rowle, try and get behind him-- _Conjunctivitis!_ _Flipendo!_ ”

Finally able to place that the litany of spells were coming from a little-used classroom several corridors over, Peter immediately headed towards the fight to see what, exactly, was going on. While it was pretty much an everyday occurrence to deal with students and their pointlessly stupid disputes—the professor had broken up three small, petty-spell fueled fights last week alone—this particular fight sounded much more serious considering the type of spells Peter had heard thus far.

There was a fury-fueled shout from the first speaker and a another sharp curse from the second before Peter managed to step into the disused classroom, fully intending on breaking up the fight he knew he would find. What the professor hadn’t _expected_ to come across, though, was the sight of three seventh year Slytherins facing off against Peter’s newest favorite student.

It was obvious that none of them noticed the werewolf’s entrance because none of them glanced his way: the seventh years too determined and focused on causing as much damage as possible to their Housemate, and Stiles was obviously concentrating on dodging the multitude of spells flying his way. 

Normally awkward and uncomfortable in his body, Stiles had somehow been brought to life and to grace by the heat and violent edge of the free-for-all fight: he shifted and wove and danced his way around the rainbow hues of all of the others’ spells and, when he was incapable of dodging in time, the teen’s wand darted out to catch that particular spell on the tip of the burgundy wood to either slap it away and off to the side—or to shoot it right on back to the spell’s original castor. It was a technique more commonly seen during professional dueling competitions—typically at the international level. To see it here and now, done by the American transfer student whose eyes blazed Beta gold with thinly veiled rage… There had been curiosity, before; now Peter felt the barest shift towards _hunger_ , greed thickening and leaving his belly heavy for the craving of _more_.

Stiles was a creature born of flame and fury, one whose wrath made the boy’s eyes glow and his magic spread like a wildfire within the enclosed classroom.

The older students, however, didn’t seem to realize just how terrifyingly outclassed they were: the three teens continued lobbing spells—curses and hexes both—at the transfer student, and Peter could literally _see_ the moment when Stiles’ patience finally wore thin, crumbling away into nonexistence. Lips thinning and gaze blazing brighter than ever, he flicked his wand and a beam of yellow light—non-verbally cast, a feat which spiked Peter intrigue and tangled-twisted it, turned it darker yet—splintered off to ram into the three older Slytherins’ chests.

The boys immediately crumbled to the ground like puppets with cut strings, and clutched desperately at either their chest or head, mouths parting to give voice to agony-ridden screams.

“Impressive,” Peter commented lightly enough when the teens’ cries had eventually quieted into pain-filled whimpers. “I’m surprised, though, that the school wards didn’t start blaring at the fact that a Dark spell had been used on Hogwarts’ grounds.”

Stiles glanced the werewolf’s way, amber eyes carefully blank, neutral in the most unsettling of ways; he watched Peter for a long stretch of time, gaze predatory and accessing and a multitude of chess moves enacted behind that veiled gaze, but the teen eventually let the porcelain mask break to offer Peter a fox-like grin, teeth bared for all the world to see. “The wards only recognize registered Dark spells. If, say, someone used a Dark spell of their own invention—one that’s never been listed on a registry—it’d be easy enough to abuse such a loophole.”

The answer was the sort that made Peter pause in turn, the anticipation that came while a breath was held, pressure building until it couldn’t be damned back any longer, and that tension broke suddenly when the professor offered Stiles a grin in return.

“I really do _like_ you, Mr. Stilinski.”

++

Peter nearly walked past Stiles during one of the Slytherin’s breaks before realizing who it was that the werewolf had almost passed—the sharp scent of a lightning strike the only detail hinting towards who it was that was currently hidden from sight. The boy was curled up in one of the window seats that littered the corridors of the fifth floor, backpack carelessly tossed on the ground to be propped up against the wall and oblivious to his surroundings. Stiles ran a crimson badge over and over between his fingers, amber-dark eyes unseeing as the student allowed himself to become lost in his thoughts. 

The professor didn’t bother to stop—on his way to a meeting with Headmaster Longbottom—but the werewolf managed to catch sight of an image of a many-legged cat, the picture’s style vaguely reminiscent of Native American artwork.

It was a Wampus Cat.

Perhaps the medallion was one that Stiles had kept from his Ilvermorny House—a memento from his old school for when the boy was feeling homesick.

_Body. Warrior._

\--the Wampus House traits, if Peter recalled correctly. They didn’t quite seem to fit the teen, settling upon him like an ill-fitting cloak: Stiles reminded him of an inferno, brightly burning and unstoppable and consuming everything in his path. Unquenchable.

Yet: so, too, was the Wampus Cat oftentimes seen as a spirit of death, its cry the first strike of the funeral toll.

And that… _that_ particular meaning suited Stiles perfectly.

++

The Slytherin was moon-drunk and high off of ritualistic magic.

Peter stumbled across—literally—the teen deep within the Forbidden Forest, shelving his duties and responsibilities as a professor for a night so that he could embrace the wilder magic of Samhain with open, feral arms. The werewolf was completely shifted: running along barely-there pathways through the towering trees while brush and various other undergrowth caught in his black fur. Most of the other inhabitants of the Forest made sure to keep their distance from Peter—the blue-eyed wolf could distantly hear the thundering of the centaurs’ hoof beats as they stayed far, far away from him.

Because of that, the Beta certainly hadn’t expected to come across any living being while he was out, but Stiles seemed to thrive on shattering any and all expectations of what most others would consider to be ‘sane behavior.’

Peter had originally loped past the clearing, not intending to linger or explore when there were so many other parts of the Forbidden Forest that called to his darker, instinctive traits. It was that familiar scent, however, that had the professor stutter to a halt: ozone and lightning, electricity sparking, and the ash that littered the ground once a forest fire burnt itself out. _Stiles._

The werewolf slipped between tree trunks at that, footsteps soundless as he made his way towards the moonlight-limed figure standing in the middle of the clearing.

Stiles had his face tipped upwards towards the Cheshire moon, cheeks wet with the remnants of tears. Blood and chalk surrounded his still figure while the scent of sage lingered in the air like a shade of a long-gone person. The professor stopped at the edge of the ritual circle, sitting down on his haunches and curling his tail around a thigh as he waited for the teen to eventually notice him once the magic high wore off.

Surprisingly enough, it didn’t take long before the Slytherin was turning his head to the side, amber eyes glowing with barely collared power as he met Peter’s expectant gaze.

“It’s Samhain,” Stiles explained with a voice that was husky from the spirits and visions both that he must have been interacting with for hours. “I wanted to say hello to my mom.”

 _Because he is a dutiful son_ , came the whisper on the wind.

++

“I find myself curious,” Peter began as he came up behind Stiles’ chair, taking advantage of the teen’s slightly hunched form to cup a warmly possessive hand over the bared, pale neck. Perhaps it was telling—perhaps it was not—but the boy did not tense beneath that unexpected touch.

“You find yourself curious about lots of things, Professor Hale,” came the boy’s reply; Stiles didn’t bother looking up from the text he was paging through, long fingers flipping through the various pages with an expertise gained from long hours of research. Stiles’ tone of voice edged into sarcasm, and Peter found himself starting to grin sharp and wolfishly even before the teen was done answering. “You’ll have to be more specific. _Sir_.”

Peter gently tightened his hold on the back of the boy’s neck, silently warning him not to edge into blatant disrespect; still: the werewolf idly caressed the calloused pad of his thumb over the steady pulse of Stiles’ throat, lingering every other stroke even as the barest hint of claws pricked at the Slytherin’s too pale skin.

“I find myself curious,” Peter continued, “about how well-versed you are with Muggle-- _No-Maj_ \--things when the entire world knows just how strict the MACUSA is on wizard and non-wizard interaction. Rappaport’s Law, isn’t that correct? And your father was head of one of the regional Auror departments, Mr. Stilinski.”

Not mentioned, as well, was the fact that Stiles had known his werewolf friend, Scott, _before_ the boy had been bitten, when Stiles’ best friend had still been a No-Maj and not yet apart of their world.

It was then that the discomfort, the stiffening of the teen’s body, finally came. Stiles stilled with the text’s page half-turned; so restrained and blank and _silent_ that Peter could almost mistake the boy for a statue.

“That’s a rather personal question, professor. I think it’d only be fair if I got to ask you one in return,” Stiles eventually murmured, quiet and restrained, and gently eased his text closed.

“Within reason, of course,” the werewolf replied, voice as low a murmur as Stiles’ own, as he listened to the steady beating of the teen’s heart.

“You know, I can’t help but laugh when the other Slytherins call me a Mudblood, if only because my blood is as ‘pure’ as theirs. If you look at Durmstrang’s student records, you’d see that the Stilinskis have been students there for—centuries. For as long as the school has been around. My mom’s side, though. She was descended from Berthilde Roche. Dunno how much you know about American history, but she was one of MACUSA’s original twelve Aurors. There’s a statue of her in the atrium of the headquarters, actually—her and the other eleven. So my ancestry is just as impressive as any of the Slytherins who throw around that slur like it’s going out of style. But… My mom was born a Squib. The Roche family decided to disown her when she was old enough to fend for herself.”

Stiles offered a careless shrug at that, time and distance making the disconnect to one side of his family seemingly unimportant now—but Peter could smell how the boy’s scent turned acrid and bitter with rage.

“She met my dad, they fell in love, got married, had me. Happily ever after, right? But just because my mom couldn’t _do_ magic didn’t mean that she didn’t _have_ it. The Roches were always a pretty strong family when it came to doing magic, and all of my mom’s magic—cut off and gathering pressure from all of the restraints it had been put under—eventually… boiled over. It ended up eating away at her brain, taking away her sanity and coherency. Healers couldn’t do anything about it—her magic made all of their potions null and void and so much goop when she tried to drink them—but the No-Maj _doctors_ … My dad was desperate and wanted to save her, and the No-Maj doctors said that they could help. They said that my mom had _frontotemporal dementia_. So my Auror dad broke the law and we interacted with the doctors, integrated ourselves in the small, ordinary town, made friends, co-mingled our lives with the No-Maj—and tried to save my mom. The doctors’ medications and treatments helped. At least for a little while. Mom still died.”

The boy took a shuddering breath at that and lifted his head, shifting out from beneath the hold that the professor still had at his nape. The gaze that met Peter’s own then was one that was filled with the pain of not-so-distant memories and rage that the ‘wolf had decided to indulge his curiosity enough to pursue his answer. So, too, there lingered a very directed sort of malice: Stiles had taken a hit by telling the story that Peter most wanted to hear—but the boy would take his own pound of flesh in doing so, as well.

“Your entire family died in a fire started by creature bigots. I know that you’re the _only_ survivor. But your eyes aren’t red—they’re blue. Why is that, Professor Hale?”

Peter _snarled_.

++

A fox sat in the middle of Peter’s living room.

The professor paused as he was stepping through the portrait that hid the entrance to his personal suite of rooms, eyeing the unexpected visitor warily. For now, he thought it wise to keep his distance—particularly when the fox fanned its tails, and Peter finally caught sight of all _nine_ of them.

“Hello,” the DADA professor began warily, glacial gaze never leaving the creature. “And who might you be?”

The fox tilted its head to the side, blatantly considering whether or not it wanted to go to the effort of genuinely answering the older man; though the silence stretched on long enough to raise the tension within the room, the fox eventually decided to answer: “Hello, professor. My contractor calls me Kuugeki.”

A contractor meant that the fox wasn’t someone’s familiar, which was… good news. Of a sort. Worse news, however, meant that the creature had been summoned from Elsewhere and deigned to contract itself with the person who had summoned it. Summoning was a dying art, and not many in Europe still practiced it. It was much more common to learn in other countries and the schools located within them—most notably at Mahoutokoro. And Ilvermorny.

“…and Stiles has contracted with a kitsune?”

The fox smiled widely at Peter’s assumption, teeth gleaming pearlescent and moon-bright beneath the matte black lines framing its mouth, lips that were barely identifiable from the plush ebon fur that covered the rest of its body. “No,” Kuugeki corrected with eyes that suddenly flared tarnished silver. “My contractor managed to summon a _nogitsune_.”

\--and their magics had called enough to one another, resonating so terrifyingly well, that the dark fox had deigned to offer a contract to the then-thirteen year-old.

And Peter? _Understood_ because he had been well-qualified for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position when the current Headmistress at that time had decided to hire him—while the subtleties between the youkai fox species weren’t immediately noticeable, the professor realized just what it meant that Stiles had managed to call to and contract with a _nogitsune_ as opposed to a regular _kitsune_ \--a zenko, an Inari fox.

“Ah. I see,” the professor answered after a moment’s pause, stalling for time to decide what, exactly, he was supposed to say and how the hell he needed to proceed—besides _cautiously_.

“No,” came Kuugeki’s response, and the nogitsune tilted its head to the side to once more return to inspecting the man standing before it. “I don’t think that you do.” Not bothering to clarify its cryptic comment—typical, really, considering the fact that the creature before Peter was a _fox_ and, no matter the culture, they were nearly always cast as the trickster of the story—Kuugeki soon enough continued. “But I think that you could perhaps come closer than anyone else previously. Hence why I’m here, wolf.”

The nogitsune’s grin returned, stretching wider and more predatory and _sharper_ than ever before.

“Let us strike a bargain, Peter Ian Hale.”

++

Most of the students had left Hogwarts to spend time with their families for Christmas—for Yule. Stiles’ father, however, had been asked to work through the holiday: with no other family besides Stiles, who was a sixth year and away for most of the year at the school, the Department Head had assumed that Noah had less obligations, less need to take the holiday off unlike the other Aurors who had large families and soaked in time around them during the break.

It wasn’t fair, hadn’t ever been, but those assumptions had become rather standard after Claudia Stilinski’s passing—and the teen’s father never argued all that hard against the shifts, either.

Knowing that no one was expecting him until the next meal, Stiles made his idle way along one of the more recognizable paths that threaded through the Forbidden Forest, footprints soon enough disappearing beneath the layer of snowfall that slowly trickled its way through the branches high above. He was less than a ghost—one of many—within the Forest.

“This is rather pointless. You know that you could have found the exact same plants browsing through any of Headmaster Longbottom’s greenhouses,” came the commentary from Stiles’ current fur stole.

The Slytherin scoffed lightly at the criticism, shrugging a shoulder if only to force Kuugeki to quickly shift its weight, balancing precariously as the nogitsune was, draped over Stiles’s shoulders. The boy earned himself an annoyed nip in response to the deliberately done gesture, and the teen settled grudgingly as he responded aloud: “True. But the plants won’t have the same… potency? Power? Than if we got them from the Forest.”

“And should you get eaten?”

“Why do you think I brought you along, Kuugeki? You’re my favorite back-up, after all.”

The nogitsune grumbled to itself at Stiles’ blatant attempt at flattering—but it also didn’t do anything further, quieting as the teen made his way along the pathway and offered no further forms of protest over the trip. Instead, the fox kept careful watch of its surroundings, ears flicking to and fro as silver-pale eyes tracked every small detail of their surroundings.

The duo were deep within the Forbidden Forest—at least several hours from the wards, let alone the castle itself—when Kuugeki’s ears abruptly pricked forward and the scruff along the back of its neck bristled and stood on end. “Wha--?” the nogitsune’s contractor began, startled by the sudden shift in alertness: Stiles stumbled to a halt and threw a hand out to brace himself.

Stiles’ hand connected with a warm, broad-- _naked_ \--chest.

Following the line of his arm to where his hand was braced against that strong chest, Stiles slowly looked up—and up—and up until he met a bright, vividly red gaze that contrasted strongly with the waxy green of a leaf crown above it: the Yuletide colors of the holly plant with its cheery berries and springtime green leaves.

In all of the possible outcomes that Stiles may have considered, this certainly wasn’t one of them—

Stiles swallowed audibly and inclined his head in respect to the being standing before him. “I wish you pleasant dreams until you return on Litha, Your Majesty,” the teen murmured, peeking up from beneath his lashes to gauge the deity’s response. The Holly King offered a small, enigmatic smile in answer and, moments later, Stiles felt the heavy weight of a crown settle upon his head.

He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and when the amber-eyed teen opened them once more… the Holly King was gone.

“ _Now_ will you return to the castle—and its wards—before stumbling upon some other mythical being from wizarding legend? Like _Merlin_ , perhaps?”

“…shut up, Kuugeki.”

++

Stiles had always been rather partial to Thestrals. It was easier to pretend to others that he couldn’t see them—less questions to deal with, for one—but there was something so sadly dignified about the winged horses that the teen just couldn’t ever look away from. So much about them was shrouded in mystery and labeled as ill omens. But… they were gentle. And being around them was soothing, quieting Stiles’ mind in a way that nothing else was capable of doing. If he was being honest with himself, Stiles was surprised that his Patronus _hadn’t_ ended up being a Thestral.

The teen moved through the herd, reaching out to brush his hands over pelts and snouts, offering up affection and a kind touch in return for the head butts and nuzzles Stiles received in turn. When the Slytherin reached the edge of the herd, however, he glanced up to see that he was no longer alone: his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor stood at the clearing’s edge.

Since that last time in the library—where Peter had asked Stiles about his relationships with the No-Majs he wasn’t _supposed_ to know and poked at the still-oozing wound that was the death of his mother (and then Stiles had responded in kind, volleying hurt for hurt)—neither had seen the other except for during class. Stiles hadn’t expected to _ever_ come across the professor outside of class because he knew that he had aimed low and hit hard—and he didn’t regret it, either, which Peter would have been able to tell, anyway.

Still:

“Professor,” the teen greeted the other, tone carefully neutral as Stiles inclined his head slightly.

“You can see them,” Peter commented instead, gesturing idly towards the Thestral herd at Stiles’ back.

“…yes,” Stiles answered, still careful, still cautious, and never took his amber gaze away from the older man.

The werewolf hummed softly, but offered up no other commentary as he turned around and began making the trek back towards the castle—leaving behind a very confused teenager.

++

The weight of the holly crown once again settled carefully atop Stiles’ head, still as green as the moment that its King had placed it there in the Forbidden Forest. It was a heavy weight, one filled with power and magic and the grace of magic that came at twilight and midnight both: the sort of magic that burned in the heart of a flame and quieted the world at large in the middle of a winter night. A balance that constantly shifted within itself—

Teeth gently scraped over the bared tendon of Stiles’ throat, closing carefully over the hummingbird’s thrum of a too-fast pulse point. There was danger in this, too, leashed and restrained as it currently was… for now, anyway. Clawed fingertips traced over the divots of the teen's spine, lingering over each arch and hollow--fragile as a bird's bones--before dipping lower still to cup over thighs to lift and pin a slender body against the cool stone of the wall.

Pinned between the stone at his back and the relentless press of Peter's body against his front, Stiles slowly opened his eyes to meet Peter’s bloody crimson, and the teen laughed in a sound that echoed with a raven’s caw, hoarse and chilling no matter the relatively mundane backdrop of the professor’s room. He brushed a thumb over the thin, fragile skin just beneath one red eye, and the werewolf’s gaze burned that must brighter at the touch, dangerous and feral and the Wild Hunt that had roamed the land once-upon-a-time ago, when there still remained something... untouchable, untamable... about magic.

“Long Live the King,” Peter murmured before taking Stiles mouth in a sharply fanged kiss.

++

Three a.m. and in a professor’s suite of rooms, Peter awoke from his dream and opened his eyes to stare at the wall opposite his bed; he was sleep-muddled with the dream still clinging to him in bits and pieces of silver-dusted cobwebs, but—

His eyes sparked and flared Alpha red.

++

Three a.m. and in a students’ dormitory, a future Dark Lord slept peacefully.

::fin::

**Author's Note:**

> On a random note since I spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME DECIDING ON IT without getting the chance to address it in detail in the story (AT ALL)... if anyone is ever interested, Stiles' wand is made from cherry wood with a heartstring from a Peruvian Vipertooth dragon. It's thirteen inches long and slightly springy. (Close enough explanation of it can be found [here](https://www.pottermore.com/wand/Cherry/Dragon/TwelveAndAHalf/SlightlyYielding).)
> 
> On a side note, the oneshot definitely took a turn I wasn't expecting. The ending surprised me, as well, wtf. XD;
> 
> Kudos and comments are seriously the best way to _convince_ me to write more, just as a general fyi. *coughs*subtle*coughs* Please leave some? Also, feel free to swing by and [say hi](http://rightsidethru.tumblr.com). ;)
> 
> *
> 
> Additional thanks to [benaya-trash](http://benaya-trash.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Olga accepted my request for a commission and made this [ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS ART PIECE](http://rightsidethru.tumblr.com/post/168796057251/benaya-trash-the) for the series. Please check it out because... uh. _Wow._


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